Government education partner Bridge Liberia, encourages parents to send their children to school
Every academic year, Bridge Liberia, the Liberian government’s largest partner in the Liberia Education Advancement Program (LEAP), supports the government through its back to school campaign to retain students and boost enrollment in government schools across the country.
Parents and guardians are encouraged to ensure their children return to school following the holidays and enroll all school going children in their household at various government schools across the country.
Government schools under the Liberia Education Advancement Program (LEAP) of which Bridge Liberia is the largest technical partner are 100 percent tuition free.
The LEAP program was designed in 2016 to improve school management and accountability, enhance teachers’ and school administrators’ abilities to deliver quality learning outcomes, and optimize delivery models that the Ministry of Education can apply throughout all of Liberia’s public schools.
Bridge Liberia supports over 300 government schools in all of Liberia’s 14 counties, including communities in the remotest parts of the country.
Teachers at these schools are well trained in teaching principles, techniques and technological skills that a contemporary teacher needs for effective delivery of learning materials in the classroom.
According to a Learning in Liberia study eighty-one per cent of students who joined a Bridge Liberia supported school in the first grade and have now spent 2 1⁄2 years in a Bridge Liberia supported classroom are proficient or basic readers; compared to only 33% of students in traditional public schools.
Teachers are trained to give girls similar priority in learning as boys by ensuring girls are called on as boys in the classroom through a teaching technique known as cold calling.
This method has proven to be effective, thereby supporting girls to make the same leap in learning as boys evident in a recent groundbreaking study conducted by Nobel Prize winner Prof. Michael Kremer who measured learning gains in schools supported by NewGlobe in Kenya.
NewGlobe, is Bridge Liberia technical partner, supporting over 1 million children in Liberia, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Asia.
Liberia is among countries in the sub-region that are still faced with the challenge of children being used as breadwinners even during school hours.
According to reports in 2006, over 15,000 Liberia children were in the streets performing different forms of child labor, from street hawking to bus conductors among others.
Parents and guardians in poor communities are encouraged to use education to change their communities and this can be done by sending their children to school.
The Ministry of education released a circular earlier this month with September 4, as the date for the opening of schools for the 2023/2024 academic year.
